Authentic Science Fiction Monthly, No. 51 — page 8: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE ENVIED tions. They were old ones: but they never grew stale. The sight of the blank, with- drawn features of a Grey could always provoke that angry enquiry once more. Now, as sO many times before, two ordinary human beings -stared at the non- committal features of their rulers, and wondered—won- dered irritably, bitterly, sus- piciously. Judith said: “If you be- came a Grey—if you died to- day and they took you over— would you forget me?” You know I wouldn’t.” “But other people have forgotten. They've been taken over, and never re- turned even to pass the time of day with their families or friends.” The paveway clicked as relays tripped, and the cross- town belt began to move swiftly. Warren steered Judith into the middle of the crowd of people coming along. “I wonder if they have all forgotten, really?” he said as they went on. “I mean, how do we know there haven’t been lots of men and women who've objected to being made into soulless machines? Maybe the awkward ones are sent off to the planets, where there aren’t any normal human beings to be friends with, anyway. We don’t know.” | “So many things we don’t know,” sighed Judith, “ and no way of finding out.” They fell into a despondent silence. Warren turned over in his mind a multitude of plans for breaking the spell of the Greys. They had been flesh and blood themselves once, hadn’t they? They had no right to become so lofty and to reserve so many privi- leges to themselves simply because they had died. If only there were some way of being turned into a Grey without losing one’s sense of loyalty to the ordinary, decent people of the world. He said abruptly: “I sometimes think I ought to— well, throw myself under a monocar, so that I could get comiclooks.con